Step Three: Recording the Sermon

Congratulations!

If you've made it this far, you're on your way! Stick a Cassette in the cassette player and press play. If you have a mixer, set your levels (see Step One, the hardware page for VU-Meter levels). Now you're ready to record with Audacity.

Recording Basics

To Record, you just press the record button with your mouse. The Record button looks like a red, round circle.

When you start recording, the spectrogram (the blue line will widen proportionately with the volume of sound) will display what you are recording visually. You want to see peaks and valleys, like below:

What you do not want to see are overmodulated blocks, like so:

A recording with "peaks and valleys" will play back nice. A "blocky" recording will sound distorted. You have some control with the Recording Volume Control (see below; it's located below the record button, above), which slides the audio record level back and forth, with left reducing the volume. Note that you can also change the input from Line In, to Microphone for example.

Go Ahead, Record The Sermon

Record your sermon (The yellow square is the stop button, by the way; and the green triangle will play the sermon once you're done so that you can check its quality).

Editing The Sermon

This section tackles common problems and how to handle them.

Too much blank space either before or after the pastor starts talking: Select the I-beam tool (the icon looks like an "I" -- see below). Then click and drag over the "flatline" section. After the section is highlighted, go to the Edit Menu and choose Delete (you can also just press the delete key).

You can also use that technique to remove noise during the sermon. Check out those numbers above the spectrogram (the blue line that widens proportionately with the volume of sound). If you note when a cough or other event occurs during recording, you can go back and remove that section from inside the sermon

Also, if your tape goes from side A to B, you can edit out the silence and tape flip.

Sermon started before tape recording started: You can fade-in to your sermon. Highlight a section of audio. Click on the Effects Menu and choose Fade In. You can do the same thing at the end to fade out (Just choose the Fade Out option on the Effects Menu instead).

Too Much Background Noise: Use the I-beam tool to select a section of background noise without speech. Click on the Effects Menu and choose Noise Removal (it's below the Fade In option). A Dialog box will appear. All you can do now is get a noise profile, so press the Get Noise Profile button. That dialog then goes away.

Go to the Edit Menu, choose Select... and then All (or use Ctrl+A on your keyboard). Again, click on the Effects Menu and choose Noise Removal. Now that it has a noise profile, both the Preview and Remove Noise buttons are activated. Click the Remove Noise button, and the noise is removed.

I Want My Mp3

Now that the sermon has been recorded (and possibly edited) let's export it to an mp3. Go to the File Menu and choose Export As Mp3.

You'll be prompted for a file name, as shown below. I name mp3s by the date and morning or evening (so Feb 3, 2004 morning service becomes 02_03_04am.mp3) with underscores not spaces, because on the internet, spaces become %20 (this is called URI encoding). So "02 03 04am.mp3" on the internet becomes 02%2003%2004am.mp3 - and that's not readable!

It's worth noting that the "Save In" box shows the directory where you are saving the file to. It's worth noting for future reference where your new mp3 is at. It's not a bad idea to send it to your desktop, Windows users, as that makes it easy to find later!

Once you type in your file name and press the save button, you'll be prompted for the ID3 tag. I choose the version 2 tags; remember that normally only the title and artist display in most mp3 players.

• Title: the name of the sermon (in this case, Walking By Faith).
• Artist: preacher, location - web address (in this case, Al Gaspard, Colonial View Baptist Church, Cookeville, TN - http://www.colonialview.com).
• Album: website (in this case, http://www.colonialview.com).
• Track Number: (left blank).
• Year: Year (in this case, 2004).
• Genre: Speech.
• Comments: The scriptural passages used in the sermon (in this case, 2Kings 7:1-5).

Press the OK button to see the progress indicator run.

You just made an mp3!

Putting It On Your Web Server For Others

Now all you need to do is upload the file to your website (however you transfer files to it, either by an online upload manager or ftp program). Then you'll need to put a link on your webpage for the sermon. The html code for the hyperlink should look like this (assuming the mp3 was called 04_18_04am.mp3 and you want the hyperlink to look like this: Walking By Faith - Al Gaspard):

<a href="04_18_04am.mp3">Walking By Faith - Al Gaspard</a>

Remember that on the internet names are case sensitive for files and directories and your webserver will likely see 04_18_04am.mp3 and 04_18_04AM.mp3 as two seperate files.

You might want to put your mp3s in a subdirectory. That way they won't exist as "clutter" alongside your webpages. If you called that directory "sermons", then the link would look like this:

<a href="sermons/04_18_04am.mp3">Walking By Faith - Al Gaspard</a>

That's it! You've Done it! Good Luck and God Bless!

• Intro: How To Put A Sermon On The Internet
• Step One: Hooking up the Hardware
• Step Two: Installing & Configuring the Software